


After Rain

by 3ssen



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Get Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, under the red hood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3ssen/pseuds/3ssen
Summary: Jason washes up on the shores of the Blüdhaven river broken, lost, and with his second life’s purpose violently shattered. But this is the city of change, gambles, and second chances, and he comes face to face with someone he’d never expected to see again.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 36
Kudos: 307
Collections: JayDick Summer Exchange 2020





	After Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prompt_fills](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prompt_fills/gifts).



The water is frigid, and it numbs the rage gnawing at Jason’s mind into a dull ache as he’s pulled deeper into the river. It had taken two years of careful planning, of stoking the anger and betrayal and righteous fury inside of him until he almost broke with the intensity of his own emotions, to get to the point where he could confront Bruce with the consequences of his own mistakes and give him the chance to deliver the justice that was two years overdue. But the Joker is still alive, god— _he’s still fucking alive—_ and Jason had really believed that there was still a chance that his words would make a difference, that his death would’ve held enough weight for Bruce to _listen,_ but he’d been arrogant. 

The fire from the burning warehouse he fell from is blurred now, flames flickering distantly as the choppy surface of the water is punctured with the rain that had begun to fall earlier, and the sound of approaching sirens are muted beneath the tumble of the waves. Jason can see pretty yellow lights from the rundown street lamps lining the water's edge, puncturing the dark in steady increments. That must be Blüdhaven's side of the river; unlike it’s twin, Gotham had chosen to continue with it’s long-standing fishing industry and had long since switched the inefficient yellow lights out for a cold white. The sight is beautiful, juxtaposed with the ugly sense of loss he feels, but the lights are obscured slightly by the dark liquid bleeding from his throat—the hopeful glow clouded by the blood of his actions, fleeting and distant. Absentmindedly, he clamps a hand around the wound, and closes his eyes.

Ironically, while trying to keep him alive, Batman had gone for this throat—quite literally, with a batarang slicing shallowly through the skin of his neck as a distraction—and he supposes it’s fitting that it was the Bat who put a ruthless end to their conversation. The old man never allowed anyone the last word.

It feels like a second death. Fate seems to enjoy punctuating Jason’s life with water; the first through soaking in the acidic burn of the Lazarus pit, and again now as he’s pulled along in the torrent of a rainy river.

Jason wonders what lies at the end of this baptism, and loses himself to the current.

—

When it rains, Dick usually finds himself walking along the abandoned wharves dotting the riverside. The wharves were old structural vestiges of Blüdhaven’s whaling history, long left behind when the city’s industries sniffed out profit in the casinos steadily flooding its core and drifted away from the stench permeating its polluted waters. Blüdhaven was a gambler at heart, and when the winds of change and chance finally blew in its favour, the people—long used to sailing uncertain waters—unfurled their sails to embrace it, and the city was reborn anew. Walking along the riverside always brings about a sturdy sense of this change, but it also holds a quiet, broken nostalgia, a reprieve from the new electric thrum ever-present in the city centre, and when it rains, the cloying smell of the river water is dampened and the air is given a crisp clarity. 

Across the river are the painted lights of the Gotham cityscape, steady and unchanging and holding an old air that its twin city Blüdhaven has long since shed. It’s a brilliant view, one Dick could easily see from the rooftop of his apartment building only a few blocks away, but he’s always drawn down to the docks. The lights are a lot more dazzling from here, where the colours bleed into choppy waters instead of being swallowed by oppressive concrete, and Gotham stares at a turbulent version of itself in the river that cleaves it from its twin. Dick catches himself wondering what Blüdhaven looks like from the opposing shore—if his own city looks just as vibrant as its sibling—but quickly waives the thought away. He hasn’t been to Gotham in years. 

Dick’s startled from his musings by his phone chiming in Tim’s ringtone. Tim doesn’t usually call this late at night—Dick’s usually on patrol by this hour. He shifts the umbrella to one hand and fishes the device out of his pocket with the other. “Hey, Timmy.”

“Have you checked the news?” 

Dick blinks at the lack of a greeting. The curtness of Tim’s words and the question itself aren’t a good sign. “No, what’s up?”

“The Joker has escaped Arkham,” Tim says, and Dick feels his heart stop, “but Batman has him in custody now.”

“I— That’s… good.” Dick forces himself to breathe. If Tim is breaking the news to him like this, then everything should be okay. “Thanks for letting me know, Tim.”

Tim must notice his distress though, because he rushes to say, “I just thought it’d be better to tell you early.”

“Thanks Tim.” Dick smiles at his little brother’s concern. “And you’re alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m with my team—not even in Gotham.” Dick is relieved, at any rate. He knows it’d be a very different phone call if something _had_ happened to Tim, but after Babs was injured, and after _Jason_ , it’s hard not to feel a nauseating dread and a bone-deep ache with any news involving the Joker. Tim continues what he was saying, “But I was looking into the security footage, Dick, and… I don’t think he could have done it by himself.”

“You’re thinking someone broke him out?” The thought is startling, and more than a little disturbing.

“I don’t know, the footage wasn’t very clear and Alfred isn’t telling me much, but… I think the whole situation might have something to do with the Red Hood.” 

Dick blinks, slightly taken aback. “That new player you told me about? I thought he hasn’t done anything but cause some unrest in the underground.”

“I checked; his activities slowed down right before this whole incident, and that’s not a lot to go off of but… Batman took me off the Red Hood case halfway through the investigation, and he won’t answer any questions. I can’t even patrol near Park Row because that’s the area the Hood’s been operating in. He doesn’t do something like this unless he knows there’s something big going on, Dick.” Dick knows. When things really came down to it, communication with Bruce was always a one-way street. “Well, there’s that and the red bat on his chest.” 

True, a criminal running around flaunting the Bat’s logo sounds like a grudge. Or at least beef with the way Gotham’s knight brandishes his version of justice. Still… “That’s a lot of coincidences to go off of.”

“I know, but just—”

“Watch out for someone in a red helmet and Bat merchandise.” Tim huffs and Dick laughs, loosening up and gazing back out the lights across the shoreline again. “Thanks for the update, Timmy, I appreciate it. And you don’t have to worry—I’m not in Gotham either.”

“Blüdhaven is still pretty close,” Tim insists, but Dick loses focus on what he’s saying for a moment—there’s something at the edge of the riverbank.

“Wait— Sorry Tim, hold up for a bit,” He interjects, distractedly. It looks like someone just dragged themself out of the water.

“What’s wrong?” He hears Tim ask.

“Everything is fine, it’s just— I’ll call you back soon.” Dick hangs up and starts making his way towards the river. The figure is still on their knees, and the closer Dick gets, the more it seems like they’re having difficulty breathing—they have a hand wrapped tightly around their throat. 

“Hey, are you alright?” Dick crouches down in front of the person, who flinches at Dick’s voice but otherwise doesn’t react, face hidden by dark wet hair. When Dick reaches out with one hand though, the head jerks upwards, and Dick finally gets a good look at the person’s face. 

For the second time that night, Dick forgets to breathe, and it feels like the floor is falling out from beneath him.

“Jason?”

Jason jolts at the sound of his name, and Dick watches as a myriad of fleeting emotions flicker across his face, all of them too brief to be decipherable, and Jason’s arm twitches forward—reaching out—before abruptly stopping. In this moment, frozen in an outreached position and drenched in river water and rain, the look on Jason’s face is pained, fragile, and devastatingly lost.

“Jay—” Dick starts, but Jason jerks his hand back as if scalded by the sound. His eyes slip closed and suddenly, he falls forward. Dick barely manages to throw his umbrella to the side and catch him in time, and in the process, his hand slips across warm liquid. Jason’s unconscious, and he’s bleeding. Dick pulls back a little to look—the blood must be coming from his throat—but he freezes when he sees the red bat spread across his chest. 

—

Everything that happens in the next twenty minutes is a hazy blur as Dick tries to heave the unconscious man back to his apartment. He doesn’t know what would happen if he called an ambulance, doesn’t know all the circumstances, but after everything that’s happened he can't risk it. It takes a bit of time, but he manages to get the man laid out on the couch.

The wound on Jason’s—is this really _Jason_ —neck isn’t as bad as it looked; the cut is shallow, but it’ll still need some stitches and the skin around it is an angry red—the biggest concern would be the apparent dip he took in the state’s most polluted river. Dick cleans the blood away and disinfects the cut, but whether or not the river has left anything nasty in the man’s bloodstream will only be clear after hours—if not days—of monitoring. 

The stitches take a few minutes, but Dick finishes them off with steadier hands than he would’ve given himself credit for. From the looks of it, there aren’t any other major injuries, and the only source of significant blood loss was the laceration on the man’s throat. Other than the pink colouring the area around the stitches, his skin has a bleached pallor, and Dick doesn’t know exactly how much blood he’s lost, or even how long he was in the river for, but. Jason’s skin was never this pale, not from what Dick can remember. The difference is jarring on an achingly familiar face, along with the white tuft of hair brushed to the left side of his forehead, the guns strapped to his thighs, and the damning red bat emblazoned on his chest.

The apparent criminality feels irreconcilable with his brother’s face, but… It has to be Jason. Dick recognized his eyes, the fragility in them, the same pretty teal-blue that makes his chest ache whenever he sees something of the same bright colour. He doesn’t know how this could have happened—the cut on Jason’s throat, the red bat on his chest, _Jason himself_ —but it has to be him. 

Dick shakes himself from his thoughts. He needs to check for head injury and concussion. He reaches past Jason’s face, fingers gently moving beneath his head, but Jason stirs, eyes suddenly wide, cloudy, and unnervingly green. For a moment it feels like some sort of cruel joke, like he’s been utterly and gravely mistaken, because this isn’t Jason, this is— 

“Red Hood,” Dick says at the gun now trained on his forehead. The man stares at him, eyes wide, breathing uneven, and doesn’t say anything in response. For a moment they’re locked in a strange stand-off, awkwardly close; Dick is still hovering over him, hand cupping the back of his head, frozen in place by the gun he neglected to take away. 

Eventually, Hood’s eyes sharpen and he breaks eye contact to flick his gaze around, taking in the scene—the couch they’re on, the clothes Dick is wearing, the apartment room—and it eventually lands on the arm Dick is holding his head with. His eyes narrow briefly and his mouth thins, and in an instant Dick is thrown back three years ago, back when there was a plucky, prickly kid trying to fill his shoes and when Dick finally got over himself enough to notice. The expression is suddenly and intensely nostalgic—he’d always been so suspicious of physical contact. 

Dick takes a gamble, “...Jay?”

Jason starts, sitting up so suddenly that Dick stumbles backwards. The aim of the gun hasn’t left Dick’s head and the unnatural green of Jason’s eyes seems to glow as his face twists viciously. Dick doesn’t have enough time to regroup, he doesn’t have any equipment, Jason lets out a snarl and— abruptly doubles over, clutching a hand over his throat. The gun lowers slightly as Jason pulls in a few ragged breaths.

“Jason, it’s me, calm down. You have a cut on your throat; I just finished the stitching,” Dick manages to say. “Jay, I— what happened? Why were you— How are you _here?_ Jason, you’re _alive._ ”

Jason looks up at him again and genuine surprise seems to flicker across his face, interrupting the pain and panic, before his features smooth over and he leans back in a carefully relaxed position, gun hand dropping to his side, suddenly cold and derisive. The change is fluid and swift and equal parts mesmerizing and unnerving. Now seemingly unbothered by the stitching stretched across the column of his throat, Jason speaks in a rough, mocking voice, “So he didn’t tell you?”

Dick’s blood freezes. “Bruce knows?”

Jason barks out a harsh laugh. “Dear old daddy is the one who gave me this,” he drawls, tracing his fingertips along his throat, and the vicious cynicism is all wrong. “So he didn’t want you to know about my return. Don’t know if that says more about me or you.” 

Bruce knows. Jason is alive and Bruce _knows_ and Dick— it hurts that Dick is still surprised, like he expected anything else from Bruce. It hurts that Dick still thought Bruce would’ve reached out to him about something as important as _Jason being alive_ ; Bruce hadn’t even told him about Jason’s death—Dick _didn’t even make it to the funeral,_ that’s why he left Gotham, that’s why they’re in this two-year standoff now, that’s why Dick decided he couldn’t take the lack of communication and trust any longer—and now Bruce apparently failed to mention Jason’s undeath. It hurts, and Jason is— Jason has dark circles under his eyes, and he looks exhausted. 

Jason is _alive_ , and Dick clears his head of the muck.

“That says the most about _him,_ ” he replies, and Jason looks almost startled at his answer. Dick is starting to put the pieces together; the Red Hood was just with Batman, Batman was just with the Joker, and according to Tim, _someone_ broke the Joker out—Jason freed the Joker to confront Batman, and what’s in front of Dick now is the end result of that. But there’s just too many things still unanswered. “Jason, what’s going on?”

“None of your business,” Jason spits out, and past all of Dick’s confusion and hurt and betrayal and relief, Dick can feel his own anger flare.

“How is any of this _not_ my business, I just lugged your unconscious ass from the docks to here, I— Jay, you're my brother,” he says, with a vehemence that breaks after the words leave his mouth, because Jason really doesn’t understand.

“No, I’m not,” he says, voice low and steady, “People change, Dickie, and you’re a reckless fool to have brought a known killer into your home. You didn’t even disarm me—I can't tell if I’m insulted or not.”

“Jay, I just found out that my— that you’re alive. I found you bleeding out by the river, that was the least of my worries.” Jason looks at him disbelievingly.

“Can you really be saying that now?” He scoffs, and Dick once again finds himself staring at the barrel of a gun. Jason stands and takes something out of his pocket. A mask—he’s planning on leaving. 

“Jay wait—” Dick’s cut off by a sudden cloud of opaque gas. A smoke bomb. Dick stumbles as he covers his mouth and nose with the front of his shirt and tries to find his way around. He can hear movements but it’s impossible to follow, so Dick tries moving towards the only place he knows Jason would flee to. The door is too risky—he has to be going for the window. 

His suspicions are confirmed when he feels a breeze as the gas starts to dissipate and funnel through the now-open window, and Jason is gone. Dick has no idea which direction he left in. He can’t give chase. He doesn’t even have any gear on and the apartment is on the third floor. Distantly, Dick hears his smoke alarm go off—he didn’t know it still worked—but he’s stuck to the window, eyes still fruitlessly searching for movement or a shadow or any indication of where Jay could have gone.

For all that Jason mocked Dick for helping a criminal and leaving him armed, Dick remains utterly unharmed. For all that Jason claimed that he’s changed, he still blusters and fronts and takes off when he’s on edge like he would all those years ago. Dick knows what to do when Jason runs away, he learned it in the precious few months they got along before his death. 

All he can do is wait.

—

Dick shouldn’t have expected any different, as far as how he’d be seeing Jason again goes, especially considering the rough state he was in when he left last time. Doubly so considering how damn stubborn he could get when hiding pain and injury as Robin. Still, Dick is surprised and thrown into a state of confusion, relief, and total panic when he comes home from work to find his apartment window open and the Red Hood crumpled on the floor beneath it, half-conscious.

“Jay!” His helmet is off and his breath is coming out in sharp, rapid puffs. Dick reaches out towards him carefully—his skin is burning up. Jason recoils at the touch before looking at Dick, unfocused and bleary. He seems to recognize Dick though, eyes lingering for a moment before closing, and he slumps down again. It’s been a little over three days since the last time Jason was here—how did he let his fever get so bad? 

It doesn’t take too much effort and manhandling to get Jason to strip down to his boxers and onto the bed—he’s still semi-conscious and can mostly stand on his own—but he’s evidently nauseous, and Dick doesn’t even know how aware of himself he is. When Jason is finally laid out on the bed, Dick leaves to room to fetch a tub of cold water, some hand towels, a glass of water, and dantrolene. He takes a chair from the kitchen and sets it beside the bed, resigning himself to not getting any answers for the foreseeable future.

  
  


It takes another day for Jason’s fever to break, another day of trying to cool him down and keeping him hydrated as he repeatedly fades in and out. Jason’s body is covered in cuts and scrapes and bruises that are predictably untreated, and Dick tries to busy himself with those, too. It feels unnatural to be cleaning someone else’s wounds after spending so much time solo—after Gotham, after Donna died and Dick felt his soul torn to shreds, after the team passed their mantles to the next in line and Dick drifted because things could never be the same. Despite his fever and delirium, Jason stirs slightly whenever Dick touches him. But he doesn’t move aside from tensing, and lets Dick work in peace. 

Dick is more than a little overwhelmed by the whole situation, and he won’t be getting any answers out of Jason until he’s aware and awake for long enough to hold a proper conversation, but he’s. He’s just glad that Jason’s back, that he hadn’t read his patterns and behaviours wrong, even after all this time. It’s like he’s been given a second chance to make things right, an opportunity to actually be there for Jason this time around after failing so poorly before. It’s incredibly selfish of him to see it this way, Dick knows, but he can't help but feel grateful. 

  
  


When Jason does finally wake up from his fever, this time coherently and for longer than ten minutes at a time, Dick is in the middle of checking up on him. Jay has the audacity to look surprised, as if _he’s_ not the one who dropped into someone else’s apartment unannounced and half-conscious. They fall into another strange stare-down, each unsure of what exactly should be happening and waiting for the other to make a move. But Dick has never been patient. “My apartment still smells smoky,” he says accusatorily, slapping the back of his hand on Jason’s forehead and then bringing it back to his own. Hmm, hard to tell without a thermometer on hand, but still seems too warm. “Do you know how hard it was to air it out?” Jason blinks. 

“You didn’t call him,” he says.

So that’s what this was about. Dick sighs and looks away. “I haven’t called him in a long time, Jason. Not since I came home from space and found out that you—” he stutters, “that you were gone through reading case logs.” That had been the last straw. Things had been rocky since Dick left for Blüdhaven, even worse when Bruce gave away his legacy—the name his mother gave him—to someone else without even asking, but things had been getting better, near the end, when Dick could look past his hurt pride and give his successor a chance. But then Dick left the planet and Jason died and Bruce hadn’t mentioned a word of it when he got back. 

He swallows past the waver making its way through his throat, “And now it takes finding you bleeding out in the river by chance to even know you’re _alive._ ” 

When Dick centers himself enough to look at Jason again, the man has an arm thrown over his eyes. Dick can’t see his expression and it throws him back into the uncertainty of the situation. Dick makes to leave, maybe give them both some space, but freezes when he hears, “It was the Pit.” 

Jason hasn’t moved an inch, face still covered, but he continues, “Talia Al Ghul threw my corpse into a Lazarus pit. Her way of either getting back at the Bat or cheering him up, flip a coin.” Suddenly the unfamiliar, sickly green that Dick had seen in Jason’s eyes the other night makes complete sense, and Dick’s thoughts flicker through all of the rumours and stories of what horrors the ancient water can do to a person, how the green eats away at the soul that it helped reclaim and consumes their sanity, but he’s caught on the way Jason talks about his apparent revival; the callousness in his voice and the implication that his life is a casualty of the whims of another, a strategic afterthought in some game of chess. “Jay—”

“What she didn’t know was that neither was ever an option; my life was never worth that much, and the Bat couldn’t care less.” The statement sticks out wrongly, juxtaposed against the memory Dick has of the mess of a city Gotham had been when Batman lost his second Robin, the mess that Tim has gradually patched up—the one Tim had tried in vain to rope Dick into going back for—but the stitches on Jason’s throat are still an angry red, and they stand out against the rest of his skin. Without thinking, Dick asks, “What happened?” 

He can feel Jason go still, and he’s pushed too far, pried too much. Jason yanks the arm on his face off and props himself up, eyes flaring with bright green, and he spits out, “I made him choose, Dickie. Made him choose between me or the clown, gave him the chance to avenge my death and the hundreds of others that sick son of a bitch stole, to save the dozens of others he’ll take when it’s his turn through the revolving door again.” Jason lets out a dry laugh, “It wasn’t even that hard to break the fucker out. Some lives are worth extinguishing, and the Bat is killing more people than he’s saving so long as that clown still breathes. He made his choice clear days ago.” 

Jason is scratching at his throat, his breathing loud and rapid, and he’s staring into Dick with an intensity that Dick doesn’t know how to respond to, with an ultimatum of moral ideology that Dick can’t address. So Dick just gently eases the hand that’s worrying at Jason’s throat away. “You’ll reopen the wound.” Jason flinches at the touch, but lets his hand be pulled down. 

Suddenly it’s like all the anger and emotion is sapped out and Jason slumps back down, tired and hollow, closing his eyes. There’s more to it than a clash of ideals—there’s something personal, fear that runs deeper than the pit, pain that cuts to his core, but Dick doesn’t know exactly what it is. Isn't sure if it's his place to know. “...Get some rest, Jay. You need it.”

  
  


Jason is gone the next morning, borrowed clothes folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Dick can’t say he couldn’t have expected it, but it still startles him when he sees the room empty. The ache is there, yes, and the tumult of conflict broiling inside of him from the surreal turn of events, but Jason came back to him when he needed help—that must mean something.

—

The next time Jason comes to Dick is a little over a week later. Dick arrives home from the station, his shift having lasted longer than usual, but something is off from the moment he opens the door to his apartment; he can feel a breeze wafting down the narrow corridor. The window should be closed. He unholsters his gun and moves in.

Red Hood is sitting on his countertop, helmet by his side, unfazed by the gun now aimed at the bat on his chest and holding a careful look of boredom on his face. It’s a weird sight to come home to, tense but not entirely unwelcome, and also not at all how he expected a reunion with Jason to be like. Then again, when has Jason ever been predictable?

“Jason,” Dick says and lowers his gun. Jason’s eyes narrow and follow the movement, and the corner of his mouth twitches downward. 

“Sure that’s a good idea, officer?”

Dick just raises an eyebrow and holsters the gun. “Jay, the last time I saw you, you were sick to the gills in my bed. If I was going to arrest you, I’d have done it then.”

Jason snorts. “That’s really not what I was getting at, Dickie. You find a known criminal in your home and you disarm yourself? I always knew you lacked self-preservation, but I didn’t think you were missing a brain.” The way he’s speaking is strangely personable yet confrontational all at the same time—like all the walls are up and he’s careful to put up a careless, dangerous front. It’s like a twisted, exaggerated version of the prickly, defiant attitude he wore like a shield as a child. Now he wields it as a weapon. “Though I should have expected it since I saw the uniform. Trying to pull double hero shifts, are we? Always so keen to jump in the line of fire, even if it means becoming a pig in the daytime.”

“You’ve already held a gun to my head once before. I’m pretty sure that if you really wanted it, my brain would have been plastered against the wall since that night.” Dick isn’t sure what exactly is going on—why Jason is here and what he wants—but Jason hasn’t budged from his spot on Dick’s counter and doesn’t look like he plans to anytime soon, so Dick loosens up the button at his collar and kicks his socks off and leans against the wall. “And I know how shitty the BPD is and how much it needs reform—that’s kind of the point of joining it.” 

It feels weird, to be justifying his life choices to Jason like this, like it might have been a normal conversation they would have had in another situation, another life. It feels like a step backwards since the last time Jason was here, like how after all of the raw honesty, Jason drew in on himself and fell behind walls of aggression and spite. Dick is left on uncertain ground again and Jason seems like a minefield that will explode with a single misstep. He doesn’t really want to ask what he’s here for, doesn’t know if that will make Jason leave, but their back and forth hasn’t gotten anywhere.

Dick pushes off of the wall and walks towards Jason, stopping just short of arms reach. He leans the back of his waist against the counter so they’re both facing the same direction and turns his head to look at Jason. “Jay, I’m glad that you’re here again, but I know that you’re not just here to snark at me from my tabletop. What have you come for?”

Jason tenses slightly and looks away. It’s like he wasn’t expecting such a direct question, like Dick caught him off guard by cutting right to the chase, and suddenly he looks a lot younger, hunched over on the tabletop and fidgeting minutely with his hands. Dick waits—and it had always been like this, hadn’t it? The best way to get a genuine answer from Jason was to brush past all of the bluster, meet the barbed comments with honesty, and then wait patiently. It was something that Dick had figured out altogether too late. 

“Why did you help me, when I came back the second time?” Jason finally says, voice quiet. “I’m a criminal that pulled a gun on you, fer Chrissake, and I couldn’t even think clearly, much less stand up straight. Why didn’t you just turn me in? It can’t just have been because of some broken sense of nostalgia.” His face is hollow and his eyes are framed by dark circles.

“I think we both know why, Jay, at least on some level. After all, you came to me, didn’t you? I don’t know everything that’s happened, and I know that I was never there for you as much as I should have been, but no matter who you think you are now, you’re still my Little Wing.” Jason jolts at the use of the old nickname and he finally looks back at Dick with an expression he can’t decipher. 

“You can't know that,” Jason says, quiet and so painfully disbelieving.

“Then why did you come here?” 

Jason’s face closes off again. “I like knowing where I stand, and I don’t like owing debts,” he says, making his way towards the open window. Jason sits himself on the edge and swings his legs over, pausing there for a brief moment with his back towards Dick. “I’ll see you ‘round, Dickie,” he says, and drops off the window sill.

—

At this point, Dick shouldn’t even be surprised at Jason turning up in weird ways unannounced, but after how their conversation ended last time, it feels incredibly anticlimactic to find him dangling outside the window, plastic bags hanging from each arm full of… something, apparently struggling with the lock while balancing his burden. When Jason finally manages to pop the window open and hook a leg through, he notices Dick staring and gives him an unimpressed, borderline offended look. “I didn’t have a five minute wrestling match with your janky-ass window lock so you could _gawk_.” Jason swings a bag at him and continues, annoyed, “Little help woulda’ been appreciated.”

“D-ghuh,” Dick says intelligently, reaching for the bag Jason has extended. “Jay, what—” He’s surprised by the weight of it and looks down at the contents. “Groceries?”

“What s’it look like—dog treats? Put those in the fridge,” Jason says without looking up; he’s rummaging through the other bag.

“Why are you— How did you carry all this up here, Jay? This is the third floor—you know I have a _door_ , right?” Dick asks, incredulous, even as he opens the fridge.

“The extra security you put on it is a pain in the ass to deal with,” Jason explains, as if that makes anything he’s doing any more comprehensible.

“So having a ‘five minute wrestling match’ with my window lock is easier than ringing the doorbell?” 

“Didn’t know how long your shift would last,” Jay responds distractedly. As bizarre as this whole situation is, it strikes Dick as exceedingly normal. At least, more normal than the weird, apprehensive interactions that were going on between them before. It’s hard to know what to make of the sudden change, but Dick has always been flexible. He huffs when he’s done with the groceries and turns back to Jason, who’s got some vegetables and bowls laid out across the table and is fussing around the cupboards.

“So why did you bring me cheese, eggs, and green peppers?” There’s a plethora of other vegetables too, now lining the shelves of his previously barren fridge.

“I’m making a quiche.” Goddamnit, Jay, what is that even supposed to mean.

“Why, exactly, are you making a quiche in my kitchen?” Dick says, still standing by the fridge, hands on his hips.

Jason finally finds what he was looking for—a plastic cutting board, Dick didn’t even know he had one—and answers, “They’re healthy, easy to make, and can last a few days if refrigerated. And it’s not like _you’re_ gonna make use of your kitchen; I looked through your fridge last time—there’s literally nothing in there except for some _way_ too old takeout containers. How are you even alive?”

Dick pointedly ignores the hypocrisy of that question and considers what Jason is saying. Admittedly, Dick eating habits are inconsistent and irregular at best, and Dick never picked up any cooking skills from Alfred despite the butler’s insistence on him learning some. He’s suddenly reminded of some post he read a little while ago, about how cats actually bring dead mice or birds to their owners because they think that their human is useless and needs help getting food, and it finally clicks that what Jason meant by “not owing debts” was… making him dinner? The thought isn’t any less confusing, but Dick is weirdly touched. That, and likening Jason to a cat is a surprisingly cute image.

Dick sighs and lets his hands drop from his hips, moving to try and see whatever Jason has started cutting up from around his shoulders—he’s gotten a lot bigger now, not just in height but in sheer muscle mass as well, and it’s easy to notice now since Jay came in a T-shirt and sweatpants instead of his leather jacket and body armour. It’s also inevitable that Dick notices just how much taller Jason has gotten in relation to him, now that they’re standing on equal footing.

Jason glances over at him and Dick hurriedly refocuses his attention on what Jay’s doing with his hands. “Need any help?” he offers, after a little while of watching Jason dice a variety of vegetables. Jason actually pauses in his work to stare at him dubiously without saying anything and Dick feels his face colour. “I can at least wash vegetables, or— or _something_.” In complete honesty, Dick has no idea what making a quiche entails, and flusters even harder at how weak his defense is.

“Get me a frying pan?” Jason says, graciously ignoring Dick’s embarrassment, and Dick obliges. He rummages through the cupboards until he finds one, and winces when a thin coating of dust rubs off on his finger as he runs it over the surface. He rinses it off in the sink. Jason takes the pan and throws the vegetables in it, bringing it all to the stove, and Dick settles himself in on the single barstool at the other side of the counter since it seems like there isn’t actually much of anything else for him to do.

The clamour is nice, he realizes after a while, even if no one is saying anything. It’s a nice change of pace. He watches as Jason continues fussing around the kitchen—manning the stove, beating eggs, cleaning up as he goes—and it’s all a very methodical, organized way of multitasking. Efficient, would be the way to describe it, and Dick wonders how much of it came after his revival. He knows that Jason had been neat as a child, from the sparse few times Dick had seen his room, but he doesn’t know how much of that would have bled into his behaviour and the way he moves—wasn’t around enough to know. 

“Where did you learn how to cook?” Dick asks, out of the blue.

Jason glances up from where he’s started pouring the contents of the frying pan into the pie crust. “Had to pick it up between training. First thing I learned from my toxicology mentor was to never eat something touched by someone else’s hands.” Dick startles slightly at that tidbit of information, but of course Jason would have had formal training post-revival, he had to learn how to use a gun—how to _kill_ —from somewhere. Learning about poison usage, though, is a lot more... _thorough_ than what Dick would have expected. He was under the impression that Talia had just sort of tossed Jason in the pit and that had been the end of that, but it makes sense that she would have been more involved in his re-training.

“And here you are, trying to convince me to eat something made entirely by someone else,” Dick responds lightly.

“You’ll eat it because you’re a fool, Dickiebird.”

“I’d be a fool to turn down free food.” That garners him a small quirk of the lips, so small and quick it could barely be counted as a smile, but it still catches Dick off guard all the same. It’s the first time Dick has seen Jason smile since, well, since even before he died. 

“Already knew the basics of cooking since before, though,” Jason continues, startling Dick out of his thoughts, and doesn’t elaborate. He’s putting the quiche in the oven now. Dick hums in acknowledgment and wonders if he means from his time with Bruce or even before that; he wouldn't be surprised if Alfred had actually managed to drill some skills into Jason, or even if Jay himself had shown interest in it, but Jason’s childhood hadn’t exactly been kind—Dick knows that his father had been in jail for a majority of his life and his mother had died of addiction and subsequent overdose—and he might have had to learn how to feed himself since then.

Jason starts tidying up the place and wiping down the counter, and Dick hops off his chair to help—as much as Jason doesn’t need it, it feels weird to just watch him bustle around his kitchen and not do anything. There’s still some green peppers left over, so he puts the bag in the fridge, taking note of the large amount of food still stored there. What’s he supposed to do with all these spare ingredients? “Jay, what—“ Dick cuts himself off because Jason is scowling intently at his sink.

“Jesus Christ, Dickie, you tryna’ create some new life-form in there?”

“That’s—“

“Pretty sure that’s a health hazard. Lemme guess, you only wash out what you need, when you need it.” Dick winces because he’s not wrong. He only cleans up when someone comes over, which hasn’t happened in a while, admittedly. It just feels pointless and tiresome to keep up the habit for himself, and it's not like there was anyone around to criticize his negligence. Until now apparently.

“I would have done the dishes if you gave me a heads up that you were coming, first,” Dick explains, or tries to, because Jason has shifted his judgmental gaze upon the rest of the apartment. It’s… not at its best right now; messy with clothes hanging off the backs of chairs, the table occupied by papers and files, and general clutter strewn around. There’s also some conspicuous dark stains on the carpet near the couch, and Dick doesn’t remember the last time he vacuumed.

“That’s really not the point,” Jason says, still looking affronted at the mess, but he turns to look at Dick with narrowed eyes. The full force of that scrutinizing gaze makes him fidgety—it feels like he’s revealing something just by standing there. Dick just smiles sheepishly, and Jason pinches the bridge of his nose before moving to wrangle the dirty dishes. 

The domesticity of the situation throws Dick off as he hurries to clear up the table—they’ll need it to eat on—but it’s not unwelcome. It’s been a long while since he talked at length like this to anyone. The conversation ebbs and flows as they work, talking mostly about inane little things and Jason continuing to nag at him, and Dick is lulled into the naturalness of it, the genial amiability, that he doesn’t notice the land mine until he steps on it.

“If you only clean up when you have guests, when was the last time you had someone over?” Jason’s wrinkling his nose in annoyance at the state of the sink as he unearths a plate from the water. 

Dick has to think about that one. “Other than the three times you’ve popped in unannounced? Maybe three, four weeks ago. But that was just Robin visiting for patrol, he didn’t come inside.”

Dick realizes something is off when he hears the steady clatter of the dishes abruptly stop, and he looks up from the papers he’s gathered. Jason is gripping a plate in his hands and standing unnervingly still. “Oh right, Timothy Drake, the Replacement,” he drawls, “the new model the Bat snatched from his neighbour’s house. Was he really that desperate to get another child soldier?”

Dick frowns. “Tim is his own person, he’s a smart kid and he’s earned the mantle in his own right.”

Jason’s eyes snap up toward him. “Right, I never earned it. I hadn’t been good enough for you to even visit, but since he’s clearly got your approval surely nothing can possibly harm him.”

“Jay, that’s not what I meant—” Dick starts, but Jason carries on, eyes ablaze.

“At least he was smart enough to stay out of my territory; maybe the Bat would finally learn his lesson when another one of his little birdies broke again. It would be easy.”

Dick can’t tell how much he means what he’s saying, all Dick can see is that sickly green flaring up in his eyes, and Jason isn’t even looking at him. He’s not looking at anything, not _seeing_ anything. “ _Jason…?”_

Jason flinches minutely at the sound of his name and blinks, eyes clearing a little, but the anger is still there, and he snarls, “This isn’t work children should be a part of. Hell, it’s hard enough on adults, just look at _you,”_ Jason drops the plate he was holding and makes a sweeping gesture at the room. Dick ignores the barbed comment and doesn’t rise to the bait.

“Both you and I know that it would have been impossible to stop either of us.” Dick abandons the table and walks toward Jason, stopping when he’s beside him. “That’s what makes a Robin. The most we can do is make sure it’s as safe as possible—” 

“That’s _not enough—He should know that better than anyone._ Now he’s put another kid in that goddamn suit. It took him less than a year,” Jason gives a wry laugh, looking down into the dirty dishwater and running a wet hand through his hair.

“Jay—“ 

“I thought I’d be enough, Dick. I thought I’d be enough o’va failure to make him stop repeatin’ the same mistakes. I shoulda been enough for him to end it once and for all.” This isn’t about Tim anymore, and the realization hits Dick like a train. This is about Bruce’s one unbreakable rule, the one Jason decided to test his own worth against. And in the end, Bruce made his choice, and the Joker is still alive—his very existence is an indication of what little value Jason’s life holds, how meaningless it is. This is about how competitive Jason was as Robin, how desperate he was to always be stronger, be faster, be _better_ and prove his worth, and how he’d failed in the worst possible way: death. The sheer lack of self-worth Jason has breaks Dick’s heart.

Jason’s rubbing at his throat again, and Dick rests a hand on the crook of his elbow, trying to pull it down. Jason jerks at the contact and whips his head around to stare at him, and this close, all Dick can see now is a desperate brokenness lost in teal blue. Dick doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. “Jason, I’m—“ 

They’re interrupted by the timer going off, for better or worse, and Jason’s expression seals up again coolly. He pulls away from Dick and goes to remove the quiche from the oven. As he pulls it out, Jason starts doling out verbal instructions detachedly—let it cool for five minutes, eat what you want and fridge the rest of it, reheating a slice takes a minute in the microwave—and it’s all too sudden. Dick can’t react in time, he’s left reeling from the whiplash and can feel his pulse picking up in his panic. He doesn’t know how to adapt to the change, doesn’t know whether or not to let Jason close off and sweep everything under the rug. He sputters out, “You’re not having any?” 

“I didn’t come all the way out here to make quiche for _me,_ ” Jason rolls his eyes, and it's like they’re back to before, like nothing that was said just now happened, and it leaves Dick feeling utterly wrongfooted. Jason abruptly pulls a folder out from nowhere and throws it down on the counter. 

“What’s this?” 

“A list of the gangs that have made moves for expanding into Blüdhaven and other relevant shit. That should make up for this—” Jason gestures loosely at his throat “—and the other time,” he says, breezing past and heading towards the window. The folder and the confirmation that Jason’s little visit was, in fact, about paying back debts feel final, like a carefully prepared severance package, and with that Jason doesn’t have any reason to come back. Dick can’t— Dick needs to know if Jason is planning on ever coming back, he can’t lose him again after failing him so badly once already, and his mind scrambles for an excuse, any excuse to stop Jason from leaving. 

“Jay I can’t cook green peppers!” Dick blurts out in one breath, as Jason is half-out the window. The statement is abrupt and lacking context and utterly embarrassing in hindsight, and Dick wonders if he’s pushed too far, if the pathetic, thinly veiled attempt to make Jason stay is the last straw that pushes him away— But Jason turns back to stare at him, an incredulous expression on his face, mouth gaping open like he wants to say something even as nothing comes out, and Dick feels his face flush because _you can eat them raw, Grayson._ He ignores the heat and stares back at Jason resolutely.

“Dickie, you—” Jay runs a hand down his face in disbelief, visibly deflating and seemingly resigned to something Dick is unaware of. Jason sighs and turns away before saying, “They last for a few days,” and dropping off the windowsill into the darkness. 

—

True to his word, Jason does come back, a week later and with a bowl of dough under his arm—the green peppers and other spare vegetables are chopped and made into pizza—and as expected, he doesn’t mention the argument. Dick doesn’t bring it up either, choosing instead to talk about recent cases or his work or his day, and Jason comments and snarks at him from where he’s kneading dough on the counter. Dick tries not to mention anything from _before_ , either, navigating and guessing at which topics to step around. Asking Jay questions, though, is a more difficult endeavor; it’s honestly a wild minesweeper game of subjects that make Jay tight-lipped and clam up or ones that he responds to with uncaring nonchalance—there’s no way for Dick to even begin to surmise what happened in the last two years and which parts of it Jason is fine with revealing. It’s the same as what they were like three years ago and completely different all at the same time, loud bickering punctuated by occasional silences, some tense, some amiable. Jason’s words are sharper now, and he’s quick to raise his hackles, but a lot of what he says is lined with self-deprecation. It bothers Dick, and it’s probably the biggest change that throws Dick off, but he rolls with the flow, and the evening ends without incident.

Jason comes back again, three days later, and again after that. Dick always leaves the window unlocked, and his fridge is never quite empty. They fall into this weird routine where it becomes a regular occurrence for Dick to get back from work and find Jason clattering away in the kitchen, or to hear him clambering through the window post-patrol, or to wake up and see him dusting away at the shelves. Jason comes and goes at awkwardly varied times of day, and it’s weird and bizzare and more than a little stray cat-like, but that’s kind of how it's always been with them, Dick supposes. Jay also always brings some kind of case file or report or juicy tidbit on the latest criminal underworkings, usually on topics peculiarly relevant to whatever Dick has been looking into at the time—whether in his day or night job—and he doesn’t know if he should be concerned or touched or some amalgamation of both.

Dick decides to ask him about it one time. “How is it that you always seem to know what information to bring?” He’s flipping through a stack of papers Jason handed him, after being shooed out of helping with dinner. Jason shoots him an unimpressed look from where he’s manning the stove.

“You’ve been talking ’bout that case for the past two weeks.” Dick blinks. He’d mentioned it two or three times, but that was mostly just rambling to fill in the silence, he didn’t actually think Jason was paying much attention to it. There’s also definitely been a few cases that Jay has helped him with that Dick hadn’t mentioned more than once, and the fact that Jason’s apparently always paying close attention to whatever Dick has been talking about—enough to make note of it and conduct his own search—is equal parts surprising as it is moving.

“I… Thanks, Jay,” he says, and looks back down at his papers a little hurriedly. That’s a lot of work to do, just from hearing a few comments, and Dick doesn’t really know what to make of it. Not to mention all the little chores Jason keeps insisting on doing. Dick has tried not to question why Jason keeps hanging around and why he’s always doing so much for him, at least not out loud—he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—but the more Jason comes over, the more Dick can’t hold back his curiosity. It can’t just be about “paying back debts”, not after all this time. It’s something else. Maybe it’s about how exhausted, how lost he looked the first few times Dick saw him; Jason’s bloody tango with Bruce had wrenched his second life’s purpose away and shattered what he’d reforged his identity upon, and Dick provides something to busy his mind and his hands with. Or maybe it’s something else entirely—Dick doesn’t know the full extent of Jason’s post-death connections, but he has stark suspicions that he’s really the only human interaction Jason has that doesn’t involve shady deals and talking with fists. Jason had never been forefront with what he wanted, especially when it came to kindness and company, and the cooking and cleaning and case files could all be some form of excuse to keep coming back. Both those options seem plausible, but neither feel like the whole story. There’s no way Dick can even try to ask about it, though.

“Are ya even readin’ those?” Dick jolts at the question and looks up; Jason’s seated at the opposite end of the table, chin resting on one hand and a cup of tea held in the other, staring at Dick with a dubious expression like he’s been sitting there looking at him for a while now.

Dick feels his face heat up inexplicably. “Sorry, I was just… thinking about things.”

“Right,” Jason says, and Dick can’t make himself keep eye-contact under the attention. He glances toward the kitchen stove—when had Jay even stopped cooking?

“The stew’s gotta sit,” Jason explains, eyebrow raised, and Dick ducks his head sheepishly.

Jason charitably lets him change the subject, and Dick stops boggling his mind on complicated things and loses himself to the conversation.

—

When Dick finally gets fed up enough watching Jason struggle to clamber through his window while holding baggage one too many times, he gives him a spare key. 

Jay looks down at the small, sleek metal object lying in the palm of Dick’s hand and frowns, not moving to take it.

“You have no more excuses, Jaybird. Use the door like a human being.” Dick can guess at the source of his hesitance; a key is commitment—is acknowledgement of whatever’s going on between them—and Dick giving it to him is trust laid bare. Jason has never been good with accepting trust and care and emotion, at least insofar as Dick knows, but that’s not going to stop Dick from offering.

“The neighbours will think their local officer is up to scandalous things,” is the best Jay can come up with.

“Right, and they won’t when someone eventually notices you sneaking through the window every second night,” Dick deadpans in response. “But seriously Jay, do you really think I’d care about what the neighbours have to say?”

Jason looks away and scowls, and his face flushes slightly with a pretty shade of pink—how rare—but he takes the key anyways.

Jay still stubbornly uses the window when he’s not carrying too much, but Dick will take what he can get.

—

“The reason why you’ve been so busy lately,” Tim says over the phone, “are you seeing someone?”

Dick barely refrains from spitting his water out. “I— No, Tim, I’m not seeing anyone. What makes you say that?” The assumption comes out of nowhere, but Dick can feel his face reddening for no reason, and he’s just glad no one is around to see. He’s sitting at the far end of the couch in the living room, having relocated from the kitchen where Jason is busy clankering away at some new recipe after seeing the caller ID light up on his phone. Considering how the conversation about Tim went last time, Dick is staying far out of earshot and under the noise of the kitchen. 

“Dick, I can hear your kitchen working. For the first time in years. _Someone’s_ making dinner, and don’t think for a second that I’ll believe you can boil pasta _and_ talk on the phone at the same time.” 

“Wh— I— I’m not _that_ bad,” he pouts, face still abnormally warm. Exaggeration aside, Dick supposes Tim makes a fair point. There’s an unimpressed silence from Tim’s end, so Dick concedes, “I have a… guest. It’s complicated.”

“Making your guests cook for you? Alfred would be scandalized,” Tim huffs, “Well, at least he’ll be happy to hear that you’re having proper meals.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who has a world class butler cooking for him.” That’s hands down Dick’s greatest regret of leaving Gotham; Alfred’s cooking is beyond compare. “So how’s school going for you kiddo?”

Tim doesn’t seem bothered by the abrupt change in subject and is happy to complain about English class, and Dick smiles and listens to his little brother vent and chatter away about his day.

  
  


When Dick finishes his call with Tim, he heads back to the kitchen area, where things seem to be winding down, and sits himself at the table. There’s a mouth-watering aroma floating over, and Jason finishes plating the food and carries it over. 

By some bizzare universe-bending coincidence, Jason _was_ actually making pasta, and suddenly all Dick can think about is Tim’s assumption and how close Jason is as he leans over to set Dick’s plate in front of him. It doesn’t help that all Dick can smell now is sweet rain and smoke, and it _really_ doesn’t help that he’s directly eye-level with a neckline that dips below the collarbone when Jason bends down. He’s even wearing the cute paw-print apron Dick got him as a joke after his shirt got stained by a sauce he was making, and Dick can feel the blush rising from his neck even as he tries to will it away.

It’s… He never really gave the unusual circumstances and interactions of their relationship much thought, just grateful for Jason sticking around and talking to him and not dropping off the face of the Earth. Dick doesn’t really know what their relationship is, not anymore after two years, and he sure as hell doesn’t know what Jason wants from it. It would probably be off-putting and more than a little awkward for the both of them if Dick had that sort of attraction to him. But Jay buys him groceries and makes him dinner and visits him every other day to bicker and banter—and Dick _really_ shouldn’t be getting flustered at a blurry, undefined relationship vaguely and coincidentally starting to resemble… something else.

Jason looks _really_ cute in that apron.

Oh _god_ , this is all Tim’s fault.

—

Jason’s been getting less jumpy at closer proximities, and doesn’t flinch anymore at casual touch so long as he sees it coming (Dick would call it progress, but he has no idea what they’re progressing _to_ ) _._ Regardless of how comfortable he is with Dick getting close though, Jason never really initiates any sort of physical contact.

Except for right now, where he’s up in Dick’s space and hands all over, trying to figure out the extent of Dick’s injuries. 

It’s pretty bad—Dick has a few lacerations and a twisted ankle and he barely managed to heave himself through the window, collapsing halfway against the sill when he made it—but it’s far from the worst he’s been through.

“Jay, I’m _fine,_ I just—”

“Where’s the blood coming from?” Jason says, intense and off-center and a lot more distressed than Dick could ever have expected. He looks upwards at Jason’s face and his heart almost stops at the slight tinge of green to his eyes. It’s been weeks if not months since he’d seen that unnatural colour, and Dick is frozen in place by the sight of it.

“ _Where,_ Dick?” Jason repeats, and Dick blinks.

“I— Below the left rib cage. Knife wound,” he manages to say, and presses his right hand on the wound again to staunch the flow. “Help me over to the couch?”

Dick yelps when Jason does more than that and scoops him up to carry him there. He sets Dick down gently, and then he’s gone in a flash, heading towards the cabinet where the medkit is stored—and at this point Dick shouldn’t be surprised that Jason knows where it is. He comes back with it a moment later, already taking out the military-grade scissors to cut away at Dick’s uniform. 

“Jay, wait,” Dick says suddenly, and Jason looks up at him, attentive and alarmed.

Dick then twists out of the top half of his suit in one swift motion. The gash on his side hurts like hell at the movement, but he only has so many spare uniforms and cutting this one up would be a waste.

“What the fuck, Dick.” Jason looks horrified and offended and worried all at the same time. 

“I still need it,” Dick explains, and Jason looks like he might have stopped functioning for a second from sheer incredulity. Well… Dick’s actions do seem a little ridiculous, if he thinks about it a little more, but Jason looks less frazzled and unstable than he had earlier—his eyes are back to normal—so Dick counts it as a win.

Jason just sighs and shakes his head and prepares the disinfectant. The wound doesn’t look too bad after the blood is cleaned away. Jason threads the needle, and Dick grits his teeth as he starts stitching.

It takes a little while, but Jason’s handiwork is neat and precise. He applies the antibacterial ointment with gentle fingers and dresses the wound with quick hands, before turning back to Dick and glaring. “Alright, Dickhead, where else?”

“It’s fine, Jay, that was the only major injury. I can do the rest myself.” Dick doesn’t know if he can take Jason breathing down on the bare skin of his stomach any longer.

“At least the ones on your back,” Jason says, still glaring.

“Alright,” Dick acquiesces, “but do you think you could get me a pack of ice first? For my ankle.” Dick angles his chin towards where he’s been elevating his foot on the armrest. Jason follows his gaze and purses his lips at the sight, still looking distinctly grouchy, but he gets up and walks towards the freezer. 

Dick manages to peel the bottom half of his uniform off before he gets back, and starts icing his ankle with the pack he’s handed as Jason positions himself behind him and begins cleaning the minor cuts on Dick’s shoulders. There’s quite a few of them—falling through a window does that to you—but it’s fast and only stings a little. Dick can feel the irritation permeating from Jason though, as he rubs on ointment in utter silence, and for once Dick is at a loss of what to say. The silence is awkward, interrupted only by the crinkling of the ice pack.

Dick feels Jason finish off the cleaning and dressing and hears him cap the lid on the ointment, but even after a moment he doesn’t budge from his position. Dick should probably say something, should ask what exactly Jason is so upset about even though that seems like a volatile subject to broach, but before he can think of anything he feels fingers ghost over his collarbone.

Dick nearly jumps out of his skin at the touch and turns to look. Jason’s glowering at the year-old scar on his clavicle—his face is incredibly close—and unexpectedly, Jay’s the one to speak up about the subject first; “How’d you manage to patch yourself up if you’ve been working alone for this long?”

Dick turns away again and considers the question. In all honesty, the answer involves having less care and more negligence than he probably should have had—that’s probably why he has more scars than he’s supposed to—but Dick just says, “I’m really flexible?”

Jason snorts at his answer, and Dick can’t repress the shiver when he feels it blow down his nape. Jason moves away and Dick’s just glad he’s still behind him and can’t see his face heating up.

“You’re too reckless,” Jason says, and Dick almost chokes.

“Pot meet kettle?” He asks, incredulous, reaching toward the medkit on the table beside them and grabbing the tape to wrap his ankle with. Though to be fair, those times Dick found Jason half-dead were probably when he was at his worst. He doesn’t really know what Jason’s nighttime activities are like now, or how he operates.

Dick drops the tape in surprise when Jason plops his jacket across Dick’s shoulders. He... _really_ wasn’t shivering because of the cold, but Dick supposes he should be thankful for the misunderstanding. That, and the jacket is incredibly warm—Jay _was_ just wearing it, afterall—and it smells really nice, like flowers and rain and a hint of cigarette smoke. Then Jason leans down over him and plucks the tape off his lap, and at this point, Dick _has_ to wonder if Jason knows he’s making Dick all flustered. But Jason just sits on the edge of the couch, all of his attention focused on wrapping Dick’s ankle.

Dick huffs, amused at Jason’s apparent obliviousness, and says “I can do that myself, you know,” even as he adjusts the oversized jacket around his shoulders and leans back. Jason, predictably, just grunts and continues his work.

It’s… been a really long time since anyone fussed over him like this, and as unnatural as it feels, as much as he _can_ do it by himself, it’s a lot easier with Jason helping him. It _feels_ a lot better with Jason helping him. 

Jason finishes off with the wrapping. “You can make it to the shower by yourself?” Jason asks, and Dick raises an eyebrow.

“You’re not going to swoop in and carry me there this time?” Dick teases, but instead of quipping back or brushing it off with a snarky comment, Jason freezes like a deer in headlights.

“That was…” Jay trails off and scowls, and Dick watches as his skin flushes a bright pink. Dick’s heart stutters at the sight, and he’s suddenly and intensely aware of how he’s still half-naked and wrapped up in Jason’s jacket—his warm and smoky and oversized jacket—and he has to look away. 

“I’m just kidding, I can make it there myself,” he says hurriedly, gaze fixed on the floor, because if Jason actually tried to carry him now there would be no hiding Dick’s jackhammering pulse.

—

Dick wakes up the next morning with a headache, and it seems that despite all the care he received yesterday, Dick still managed to catch a fever. He grumbles and groans and buries himself deeper into the blankets, and when Jason pops in and finds him there, two hours past noon, he scowls and heads towards the kitchen without saying anything. 

Jason comes back into the room a moment later with an empty glass, a pitcher full of water, and some pain killers all atop a food tray. Dick’s throat is parched and Jason looks like an angel right about now, so he makes weak grabby hands at the tray. But Jason sets it on the table beside the bed, and abruptly yanks the blanket off of Dick.

“Jayyyy,” he whines at his merciless angel, curling up against the sudden cold, still sleep-addled.

Jason just looks at him, unimpressed as he balls the blanket up. “I know you know how to deal with a fever, Dickie. Are you tryna fry yourself to death?” He plops the ball at the foot of the bed and walks over to fill the empty glass with water. “Drink,” he demands, holding the cup out, and Dick sits himself up to oblige. Jason takes the empty cup from him when he finishes, looking disgruntled when Dick wipes his mouth with the back of his arm.

Then Jason sits himself down on the bed, slides his hands around the back of Dick’s neck, and pulls their faces together.

“J— Jay?!” Dick stutters, brain almost short-circuiting. He’s definitely wide awake now, with Jason pressing his forehead against Dick’s own and cradling his face with his hands. He can feel Jason’s breath on his lips and the colour rising to his own cheeks—Dick’s heart is about to explode.

Jason pulls back and frowns. “You’re really burnin’ up.”

“I— You— You were checking my temperature?” Dick asks, incredulous, holding a hand against one of the cheeks Jay had been cupping. The fever is decidedly _not_ the reason why Dick’s face is burning so badly.

Jason has the audacity to look startled, and he says, “It’s how my mother used to do it? Always said it was more accurate than using hands.” Even as the words leave his mouth though, Jason looks like he’s finally catching onto the source of Dick’s panic, pinking at the ears and standing up abruptly as if to put distance between them. “It’d be the most accurate with a thermometer though,” Jason blurts out suddenly, turning away and walking briskly towards the door, presumably to go find a thermometer. 

Dick lets him run away, because his mind is too caught up on how pretty Jason looks when he’s all panicked and flustered.

  
  


Jason returns again later, noticeably without a thermometer but with a bowl of soup instead, and neither of them bring it up. 

It almost feels like a reversal of their positions from so many nights ago, Jason dragging a chair over and sitting by the bedside, switching out cold towels for him, but a lot less extreme. 

Dick also fades in and out of sleep, and one time he wakes up to find Jason collapsed forward onto the bed, puffing out short breaths and fast asleep. The position doesn’t look very comfortable, and Dick should probably wake him up before he pulls a muscle somewhere. He reaches out and runs his fingers through the white lock of Jason’s hair, brushing it to the side and out of his face. There’s no way he doesn’t stir from the touch, Dick knows how much of a light sleeper Jason is—even exhausted and delirious and sick to the gills, he always woke up with the lightest of touch. He has to be awake, but Jason doesn’t move.

Dick doesn’t know why. He continues playing with Jason’s hair, though; Jay probably wouldn't let him do so at any other time, wouldn’t let _himself_ let Dick do so. If Dick thinks about it, it’s been like that from the start; Jason’s always hidden himself away behind walls, rarely showing the soft, squishy interior Dick knows he has—it probably came with his upbringing—but he’s also always been apprehensive of the vulnerability that’s _shown_ to him. He’s constantly hesitant about accepting the feelings and emotions of others even when it seems like he so dearly needs it, _wants_ it even. Jason has always been a walking contradiction, and this is no exception.

It’s quiet, and there are things that Jason won’t let himself openly hear or accept without the guise of sleep, so Dick cuts away at his own insecurities and lays his heart out in the open; “You don’t have to keep doing things for me, Little Wing. I really appreciate everything you’ve done, everything you’re _doing_ , but I want you here with me whether you give me something or not.”

Jason doesn’t move, but Dick didn’t expect him to. He closes his eyes against the quiet, and lets himself get drawn back into the lull of sleep.

  
  


When Dick wakes up again, Jason is gone. The chair he was in is back at the kitchen table, and the apartment is devoid of life. There’s a pot of soup on the stove, though, with instructions on how to reheat it printed neatly on a sticky note.

Dick sighs, rubs his eyes, ladles out a bowl of cold soup, and waits.

—

Jason doesn’t show up for the next three days, and while that isn’t _particularly_ unusual, each day fills Dick with a little more self-doubt. Things had been going so well, they’d been getting… somewhere. He shouldn’t have said anything that day. It had been too much, _of course_ it had been too much, but Dick had thought that— Dick doesn’t know what he was thinking. He blames it on the fever, and wallows and mopes on bed, wondering how long it will take for Jason to come back and pretend nothing happened. His mind is allowed to run loose with doubt since he’s not allowed to go to work on a bum ankle and has nothing else to busy himself with.

  
  


It takes another two days, and by this time Dick is up and at it again at the station. He’s at his desk doing paperwork when he receives a short list of groceries by text from an unknown number; _Grab these on ur way back?_

Dick almost hurts his cheeks smiling at his phone screen, the uneasy tightness in his gut finally loosening. Jason still wants to come _back,_ Dick hasn’t screwed anything up once and for all, and even though it seems like Jay’s still intent on cooking for Dick, he’s asking for a favour. Granted, it’s the smallest of errands, but a favour nonetheless.

Honesty and patience, that’s how it’s always been. Dick floats through the rest of his day.

  
  


The supermarket is loud and crowded, and Dick blames that on why he apparently missed Tim’s text from fifteen minutes ago saying that he just got to Dick’s apartment and is heading inside to drop something off. Dick is already in the apartment parking when he sees the notification, and his heart leaps to his throat even as dread settles under his skin. This has to be the worst timing ever, Tim doesn’t usually drop by unannounced and Dick doesn’t know when Jason will arrive or if he’s _already there_ , and Dick sprints to the third floor taking three steps at a time.

In all honesty, Dick doesn’t know what to expect. His mind keeps snapping back to when Jason talked about Tim the first time—the anger, the vitriol, the self-deprecating abandonment and jealousy, the implication of _violence_ burning in the haze of green. He wants to believe that Tim— that they’re _both_ fine, but the last time Dick saw Jason’s eyes glow green and unstable and out of control was less than a week ago. 

He throws the door open, heart racing and out of breath, and his blood freezes at the mess the hallway is in. “Tim!” He calls, stumbling over the obvious remains of a scuffle. 

He finally reaches the living room, and Tim is gagged and bound to a chair and— unharmed?

“He’s fine, Dickie, not even a scratch,” Jason says from where he’s crouched at the side. He’s holding a spray bottle in one hand and using a cloth to jab at a red stain in the carpet with the other. “Though I can’t say the same for me,” he continues wryly, and Dick notices the dark bruise forming along his right cheekbone and the small trail of blood on his shirt. Probably the same blood that he’s trying to dab out of the carpet right now.

“Jay, what—”

“You getting here is my cue to leave,” Jason interrupts, abandoning his work and standing up. He looks a strange mix of worn out and pissed off, and it might have seemed like any other grouchy reaction, but his eyes are flashing green and his hands are trembling a little. “You deal with the Replacement; I’m not staying for this shitshow any longer than I have to.”

Jason turns to walk towards the window, and Dick scrambles to stop him. “Jason, wait—”

“Jason Todd, the second Robin?” Both of them freeze at the sound, and Dick turns back to look at Tim, who’s managed to free an arm and pull his gag down, and is staring at their exchange intently. Tim’s eyes widen at their reactions, “So it _is_ him. It was just a theory, but…”

There’s a stagnant moment where no one moves, but then Jason speaks, sharp and abrupt, “I’ll see you ‘round, Dick,” and bolts out the window. Dick twitches at the movement, wanting to follow, but he shakes his head and takes a breath; he can catch up to Jason later. He runs a stressed hand through his hair and turns back to Tim.

Tim looks exceedingly awkward, like he’s not sure if he said something he was supposed to, but he starts wriggling again and Dick moves to help untie him.

“Sorry, Timmy, that was…” Dick is utterly at a loss of what to say. The whole situation is a mess—Dick is still having trouble processing all of it—but at least it’s better than anything Dick had expected it to be? Silver linings?

“I think,” Tim says carefully, eyeing the window, “I’ll call ahead, next time.”

There’s a pause, and then Dick lets out a laugh, tension bleeding out. “Yeah, that might be a good idea. What even happened?”

Tim fidgets a little. “I might have mistaken him for a robber. And attacked him.”

Dick just runs a hand down his face, resigned. “He came through the window, didn’t he.” Damnit, Jay.

Tim snaps his head up and nods emphatically, like he’s glad Dick understands. “Then this happened,” Tim gestures at the ropes now on the floor, “and you know the rest.” Dick most definitely does _not_ know the rest, since apparently Tim managed to find out Jason’s identity from the whole encounter—he _has_ to have left something out.

“So how did you figure it out?” Dick asks, after a beat.

Tim just shrugs a little, and says, “He already told me he was the Red Hood before you came, and that matched up with the cut on his throat listed in Batman’s write-up. I’d done a little more research on Hood, and found out that he’s closely tied with the Al Ghuls, and well, I’ve read up enough on the effects of the Lazarus pit.” Tim pauses to gesture vaguely at his eyes, “Then there’s how Batman wouldn’t let me in on the case, and… I saw Bruce in the cave, with the memorial case.” Tim doesn’t elaborate on that, and continues, “I didn’t think much of it then, though, and I only put the clues together when he called me ‘the Replacement’ and you said his first name.”

“I— Wow. Okay,” Dick blinks. “Timmy, I know I can’t ever say this enough, but you’re a genius.” Tim blushes and tries to hide his smile at the compliment, so Dick pulls him close to ruffle his hair. “You’re _not_ his replacement, by the way. No matter what anyone says.”

“Hm? Oh,” Tim says, but he doesn’t look at Dick’s face and it makes Dick want to pick him up and squeeze him until he understands. Tim says, “The second robin though. He’s not really what I expected. Well, it’s not like I expected that I’d ever _meet_ him, but. I can kind of understand why you or B didn’t tell me.”

“Sorry, Tim. I didn’t think it was my place to tell,” Dick says, and Tim nods. “And well, things are a little complicated.”

Tim is quiet for a moment, but then he turns to Dick and eyes him suspiciously, “Wait, I’m guessing Bruce doesn’t know about any of this?”

Dick sighs. “You know I haven’t talked to him in a while, and I think it’s a fair exchange given that he didn’t tell _me_ about Jason coming back.” Tim’s eyes widen in surprise, and then he winces. It’s something that they’ll probably have to address with Bruce eventually, but that’s way farther down the line, and Dick’s not even going to try to think about it when he’s sober. “Think you could keep all this under wraps for now?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Tim says, quiet and earnest. He starts shifting his gaze around the room—from the window, to the table, to the kitchen, to the half-cleaned bloodstain—and Dick knows that Tim’s taking it all into that big brain of his, he knows he’s being scrutinized, and he’s not sure what Tim will come up with when he finishes his scanning. Eventually, Tim turns his attention back to Dick.

“You know, this really isn’t what I was expecting when I asked if you were seeing someone,” Tim says, thoughtfully.

Dick sputters and tries to form words, “Tim— That’s not— He—” 

“He runs a drug ring, you know.”

“He— He _what?_ ”

“It took control over most of the Park Row area and was steadily expanding until a few weeks ago when—well, I’m assuming _this_ happened,” Tim slides a hand across his throat for emphasis, “and we had the ring marked down as unusual because the Red Hood has a penchant for making examples of anyone who sells to children.” 

Tim raises an eyebrow at the blank stare Dick gives him as if half disbelieving, half resigned to the fact that Dick has not made himself privy to the… _finer details_ of Jason’s life. Dick just sighs and runs a hand down his face because that definitely sounds like something Jason would do, aggressive and calculated and misguided, with his heart so fiercely in the right place yet in all the most dubious ways. Jason has always cared so deeply—that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Hell, he even set up in Crime Alley, the skeevy neighbourhood he was born and raised in and the place that arguably gets the worst of Gotham’s crime. Jason probably thinks that crime-on-his-own-terms is as good as it’s going to get in a place like that, protecting the most vulnerable as it’s criminal overlord, and Dick doesn’t even want to think about the moral ambiguities and loaded questions in that package. At least, not now.

“He just,” Dick says finally, “needs someone to be there for him.”

Tim looks at him, long and keen and searching, and Dick wonders what Tim sees in him—with his room in a mess and his window wide open—wonders what Tim finds when he unreadably says, “and that’s you.”

Dick just shrugs one shoulder and smiles, a tad wry, “That’s me.”

A moment passes as Dick remains under the clear-eyed scrutiny of Tim, who then abruptly breaks gaze to reach into his pocket, stepping forward and rummaging around his jacket somewhat impatiently.

“I actually came to give you this,” he says, pulling out a small, sleek device and placing it into Dick’s palm. 

“A comms device…?”

Tim elaborates, “It’s tuned in to a frequency only accessible to the one I have. I asked Babs for help with the encryption, so you know it’s secure.” A beat, then he adds, “Batman doesn’t know about it.”

“Timmy, I— Thanks, but what exactly is this for?” Dick honestly has no clue. Tim huffs and rubs the back of his neck.

“It’s not just Jason,” he starts, but then flounders a little. The statement is more than a little confusing. Tim must notice Dick’s lack of understanding though, because he rushes to clarify; “I— Dick, you need to have people be there for you, too.”

Dick blinks, as the implication of this hits him. “Aww, kiddo…” a smile breaks over his face as he grabs the boy and pulls him into a tight hug. “Thanks for looking out for me, kiddo, and for being here for me. You’re the best support I could ask for.”

He feels Tim’s arms wrap around him, feels the teen turn his face away to hide the blush he’s sporting, and Dick reaches up to ruffle his hair. Tim speaks, muffled, into his shoulder, “Dick, seriously. You need to be more careful. I know you haven’t been in contact with your old team very much, and it’s not like you can call me on your cell if anything goes wrong on the job.” Dick pulls back slightly to look at him, and Tim continues firmly, “If I learned anything from you, it’s the importance of having someone there to catch you when you fall. That,” Tim eyes him disapprovingly, “and practicing what you preach. That’s what this is for.” He takes Dick’s hand and curls it over the earpiece, and Dick almost melts.

“Aww, what have I done to deserve you,” Dick says, ignoring the jab at his bad habits, and pulls Tim back into another embrace. Really though, he’s supposed to be the one looking out for his little brother, not the other way around.

“I mean it Dick, use the comms. Heaven knows how long it will be before you get yourself in deeper shit.” 

“...When did you get this cheeky?”

“I learned it from the best.”

—

When Tim leaves a little while later, and after Dick sends him off, Dick returns to his apartment and sighs. He steps around the mess in the hallway and heads towards the window. There’s a cold draft coming in, but before he can close the window, he catches a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. 

Dick’s pulse picks up a little, and he heads for the roof of the building.

Jay sits at the edge of the roof, legs dangling off the side, with a lit cigarette balancing between two fingers. He doesn’t move when Dick steps audibly towards him, but stubs the cigarette out when Dick sits himself down next to him. The bruise below Jason’s right eye looks painful, and Dick starts reaching a hand up to inspect it, but he hesitates, and lets his hand drop back down to his side. They’re sitting close together, almost touching but not quite.

They sit there for a while, staring at the painted red of the Gotham cityscape as the sky continues to darken and the lights flicker on in the distance. 

“You thought I’d have hurt him,” Jason says, gaze still fixed on the horizon.

“I…” Dick can’t even deny it. After how far they’ve come, after all that has changed, Dick still stands in the evidence of his own mistrust. ”Jay, I’m sor—“ 

“Don’t be,” Jason cuts in, “I— Dick, you were right to think so. _I’m_ surprised— It’s just— S’ hard to control it, ya know?” His voice trembles as he meets Dick’s eye, and Dick is taken aback by the fear in his face. “The rage is still there, Dick, the urge to _hurt_ , and it mighta’ simmered down a little, but sometimes it feels like it’s always eatin’ away, from the inside out, and it’s like I can’t breathe.” Jason’s rubbing at his throat, and without thinking, Dick reaches out to pull his arm down. Jay doesn’t flinch at the touch, but he looks away as he says his next words; “I don’t know what woulda’ happened—what I woulda’ _done—_ if I met him earlier.” 

Dick tugs at the arm he still has in his hold until Jason turns back toward him, and he slides his hand down to wrap his fingers around Jason’s. “But you met him _now,_ ” he says. Jason’s eyes widen a fraction, and he swallows. 

“But I met him now,” he repeats, closing his eyes and leaning forward to rest his forehead against Dick’s. Then he pulls away. “I’m still against him being Robin, though,” Jason says sternly, “even if he _is_ as stubborn as they come.”

Dick chuckles and wonders what kind of conversation happened in those fifteen minutes. “It’s what makes a Robin. Did you know that Tim’s actually the one who forced himself into the role? Batman refused to take him on for a whole month before caving in when he popped up in one too many crime scenes.”

Jason snorts. “Of course he did. So how’d the Bat screw up so badly that the neighbour’s kid found out who he was?”

“Tim’s a lot more of a detective than the either of us ever were,” Dick says, preening a little at the chance to brag about his little brother, “He found out because he was a bright, level-headed toddler with a penchant for late night photography.” Jason looks almost impressed.

“At least that means the Replacement will survive a lot longer,” he says, and Dick frowns.

“That’s not what he is. You’re not replaceable, Jay. Not to me,” Dick insists, leaning close, and he says it with an intensity he hopes comes across, with an unshakable belief he hopes Jay can feel. “I know I wasn’t there for you before. But you’re here now, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to fix. Thank you for giving me that chance.” 

Dick swallows as Jason searches his eyes, an unreadable expression on his face. “You’re unbelievable, bluebird,” he whispers, and Dick doesn’t know what he means. Jason leans even closer, and Dick holds his breath, waiting.

It starts to rain though, a few cold drops striking Dick’s upturned face, and Jason reaches up to brush the back of his finger across one that landed below Dick’s right eye before pulling away. 

They head back inside.

—

A few weeks pass after their talk on the rooftop. Dick still doesn’t really know what to make of the whole exchange, doesn’t know exactly what changed between them. It feels like they’re on the cusp of something, on the verge of becoming something else, and all it’ll take is just a small little push. But every time there’s a quiet moment, every time Dick manages to pull Jason a little closer than usual or twine their fingers together, he always ends up chickening out.

  
  


Dick is lying on the couch one time, drifting off from spending an afternoon looking over case files, when he hears Jason enter through the door—he’s been using the door ever since Tim happened, Dick finds it hilarious—slipping his shoes off and padding over to where Dick is sprawled out.

Dick doesn’t know why, but he freezes up and doesn’t move, keeping his breathing steady and his eyes closed, and he can kind of understand why Jason did the same on the day Dick caught a fever—it’s instinctive, to an extent. He feels the cushion dip as Jay sits down on the edge of the couch. Once again, their positions are reversed, and Dick is almost certain that Jason knows he’s not asleep when he feels fingers slide through his hair, a direct mirror of that day.

Sure enough, Jason speaks, breaking the stillness and the silence, “Wasn’t you, Dickie,” he says, voice quiet, “I’m the one who's been given a second chance—at life, at finding meaning and worth. At being loved again, even if I sure as hell don’t deserve it.” Jason tucks a stray strand of Dick’s hair behind his ear, and Dick’s chest aches at what he’s saying, but he doesn’t move. He can’t move. Jason knows he’s awake, but these are the things that Jason can’t say to him out loud, the insecurities and vulnerabilities that he won’t let himself reveal in the open, and Dick doesn’t know what would happen if he breaks the guise of sleep.

“But I want to be here with you, too,” Jason says softly, echoing what Dick had told him weeks ago, leaning down and hovering so close Dick can feel the warmth emanating off him and smell that smoky scent, and the words he murmurs next make Dick’s heart stutter, “I want you, Dick.”

That’s— Jason knows he’s awake, he _has_ to— He—

Jason has never been predictable, _of course_ he’s the one to take the first step, and Dick’s breath catches when he feels warm lips ghost over his cheek. The kiss is fleeting and incredibly chaste—it’s a peck on the cheek, for goodness sake—but Dick’s eyes fly open and he feels his face reddening.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” Jason says, leaning back with a smirk.

Dick scrambles to sit up. “Jay— I— You—” Dick halts, and takes a breath to compose himself, and Jason looks far too amused. Dick huffs and glares at him, “You’re not the one who gets to decide whether you deserve my love or not.”

Jason jolts, like he didn’t expect Dick to say that, like he’s still surprised that Dick couldn’t possibly think otherwise. Dick reaches out to tug at his arm and pull him close, running a hand through the white lock of his hair and looking into a teal expanse, “I’m in love with you, too, Jay.”

Jason’s eyes widen, like even after everything, he still couldn’t believe it until it was said out loud. “You’re a fool, Dickie. Too damn soft for your own good,” he whispers, closing his eyes and knocking his forehead on Dick’s.

“I’d be a fool to turn down someone like you.” Jason might not believe it, not yet, but Dick will prove it to him eventually. “That being said, is this alright?” Dick asks, slipping his arms up around Jason’s neck.

Jason just looks at him, disbelieving. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this for,” but even as he says it, his skin flushes that pretty shade of pink and the hands that slide onto Dick’s hips are aggravatingly hesitant. 

Dick chuckles at how utterly adorable Jason is, and lets himself take the next step, pressing up to kiss him.

—

They’re still on the couch, twenty minutes later, and Dick is in the middle of nipping at the scar on Jason’s throat when his stomach growls.

Both of them freeze at the sound, and Jason frowns. “Should I get started on dinner?”

Dick lifts himself up slightly to look Jason in the eye, but otherwise doesn’t budge from where he’s sprawled out on top of him. “As sexy as you look in that apron, Little Wing, I’m sure we can manage with takeout for one night.”

Dick didn’t know Jason’s skin could turn pinker than it already has as he starts at the comment and gapes back at Dick, half scandalized. “Dickie, you…”

Dick just laughs, and ducks down to continue where he left off.

—

BONUS

“Did you really have to gag Tim, though?” Dick asks, out of the blue. He’s texting his little brother and has his head pillowed in Jason’s lap. For some reason, Jason scowls intensely and flushes pink. 

“Jay?”

“I panicked.” 

Dick puts his phone away and stares at him blankly. Jason pauses and fidgets and sets the book he was reading aside before dropping his face into his hands.

Jason mumbles, utterly miserable, “How the fuck did you raise that brat, Dick? He tried to give the Red Hood a shovel talk while bound to a chair. The hell was I supposed to do with that?”

Dick bursts out laughing, even as he lifts himself up to smooth Jason’s glower away and kisses at his jawline.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for making it to the end!! Writing a fic was harder than I could ever have imagined...
> 
> A special thanks to prompt_fills for the prompts! You gave me so much freedom with them and initially I was so intimidated by this, but I ended up having a lot of fun with letting the writing take itself where it wanted to go. I hope this was as enjoyable for you to read as much as it was for me to write!!
> 
> An enormous thanks to empires, who beta’d this piece on incredibly short notice and was paramount in helping me take a step back to reevaluate my work.


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